EVENTS

That was quick

Reading the Sunday papers was really quick today. I skipped over all the articles that had anything to do with 9/11, which resulted in almost the entire front and the forum sections being eliminated, along with good chunks of the others. Even the comic section, my favorite, took less time because some of them took the occasion to voice some sappy sentiment.

I was interested in seeing how the paper would deal with the first game of the football season for our team but in this one area, they did not let the anniversary get in the way and produced a full sports section and a supplement on the coming season.

The paper may wallow in manufactured grief but it has its priorities. Nothing gets in the way of football.

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Comments

It really is a shame that more people don’t realize the industry that the media is. It’s frustrating more than anything. Many people may see your post as being insensitive, whereas a more educated thinker would realize the capitalistic ideas of “content” today and how we are being manipulated by it. Thank you for this post.

Why worry? Most of those who “commemorated” 9/11 did so by buying things and demonstrating their unthinking “patriotism” while remaining completely oblivious to the cause of 9/11 (vis-a-vis US foreign policy, not “terrorism”).

An incompetent doctor (or one trying to make a profit from prescriptions) will treat the symptom instead the disease, making it worse while trying to make money off of it. “Terrorism” is a symptom, not the disease; the US’s own actions and foreign policy caused 9/11.

I had no patience for any of it. It was all self-pity and self-centered self-aggrendizing. The US is a nation, not the nation. These colours don’t run the world, something the US seems incapable of grasping.

Speaking of quick, and slightly off topic, the British and European markets are freaking out over what the British government has done. The British FTSE index has dropped more than one percent since it opened an hour ago, as I write.

The British government has ordered banks and investement firms to be separated legally and financially – you know, the way banks and investment firms used to operate before 1999, before the US rescinded Glass-Stegall and started this whole financial mess. And to no surprise, the markets are lying, claiming this will “hurt the recovery”. Total bullshit, pardon my language.

Canada never allowed the markets to play fast and loose with the public’s money, keeping the old rules in place for the last decade. The fact that Canada was the only industrialized country without a single bank failure since 2008, and had the shortest recession of the G7 countries (nine months) seems to have gone over their heads…or more likely, in one ear and out the other.

Playing by the old conservative rules – in Canada, and now in the UK – may not be as profitable, but it sure as hell will make an economy more stable. Canada also didn’t have the job losses that every other country had, nor did it need to enact any “austerity measures” (read: cutbacks).

Now the question is, will the rest of Europe and the US smarten up and pay attention?